The Simurgh's Song
by Penrose Quinn
Summary: She dreams of a world fated to fall, and wearing the face of another, she lives vicariously in it. [Reincarnated OC/OC!Fem!Alibaba]
1. overture

**Edited: 3/20/19**

* * *

There is a sacred bird who is thought to be the sun, once upon a time, that soars upon distant lands and shores with its crowned head and massive fire-plumed wings. It is called by many a name, of different tongues and different cultures; its true name, however, has long been lost within the seas of time and remold anew from the rafts of warbled songs and half-truths.

It is ancient, too. Some say it is as old as the moon, others as the Rukh. But, curiously, the telling always goes as this: the sacred bird is not immortal and it is old, so old that it has seen the destruction of the world for three times, thus it lives through three lives, three worlds, and three sufferings.

—

". . . it is meant to suffer?"

"Yes, love, like the rest."

"I don't understand," a child protests, eyes wide and unburdened by such words.

"Perhaps, one day," an ailing hand rests on her cheek, the touch fleeting, "you will. In another time."

A strangled breath. A lapse of silence, then the numb drone of a flatline. The day is scarred in white, pale—like her mother's hand, buried against waves of white sheets, cradled within the casket of a white room. The child doesn't cry.

That is what she remembers.

—

—_but not the other one. _

Yet she still dreams, anyway.

—

_There was a woman_, she remembers, too.

"Mama," she calls out from her blankets, and Mama coos her back to sleep with but the gentlest of voices. She has always done so, and in a similar pattern, she returns by my side with a warm hand resting atop my head.

She wishes it stays there forever.

However the sentiment simply withers away when dawn arrives; within the slums, the fog thins out into mist and the raw glow of morning light washes the world bleak and ashen-gray. Mama hasn't been muted down like the rest. Hardly so, when she is vibrant in the colors of cream, olive green, and dark blue. _Blue_, she muses wistfully. The color of dusk, brushed subtly on her mother's eyelids like evening shadows. Then a deep red for her lips.

Mama is beautiful. She wishes her mother hadn't been too beautiful and too young.

And too kind.

"B-bad . . . dream," _again_, she will have mumbled, if she doesn't decide to leave it out instead. With time, those vivid dreams haunt and remain still, and Mama knows it most of all. She does what she can. She always does. An embrace, a soft hum of some sweet lilting tune, only to scare the vague streams of visions away. It never works, though she is with her for a while longer and that matters more. She hopes for it to last.

"Mama," she whispers, but the unspoken words doesn't shape out right. They contort into something else: "I love you."

_I've always known. I know why you have to. . ._

Mama smiles. It is the promised sun.

Her eyes close.

"_I love you—"_

—

"—princess!"

Smothered by silk and soft linen, she is muffled by a stranger's enthusiasm. A very particular enthusiasm for _children_, she should note, when the woman before her feels the need to coo and wrangle her in her arms like some doting mother. Truth be told, she has no name to pin the woman with, but there is something strikingly familiar in her countenance; soot-black hair and brown eyes, with a familiar blue pigment colored on her lids.

_But it isn't the same. _

"Oh, what a princess," the woman says, almost breaking into a mid-squeal. This close, one will have first taken notice of the sweet scent of her skin or her expensive pearl earrings, unhidden by her dark locks. However she can't help but see how attractive she is. It is always a telling quality, attractiveness; how one lures and moves with it, speaks and simpers in a certain way.

"Is this yours?" asks whom she presumes to be the acquaintance of the woman, a foreigner equally beautiful and similarly dressed.

"No, no, but wouldn't it be lovely if she is?" the woman replies, lifting her face up. The shawl tumbles on her small shoulders. "A charming face. Blonde hair, bright eyes, like gold-fire," and then, finally, she turns to her: "she would likely take after her father," there is a chuckle, and some part of her hopes she doesn't realize how much her heart is stammering against her chest at those speculations.

When the woman confronts her again, she does surprise her with her next question. "Where's your mother, little princess?" her smile seems amicable enough, but her lips are stained crimson. A provocative red.

She blinks. "I don't know."

Mulling, the woman points at a nearby brothel. "Hm, is she in there then?"

_I don't know._

"Anise," she musters out. That name has never left naturally out of her mouth, but it always feels as if she has been uttering it for years. She tries again, testing it on her tongue, "is there someone called . . . Anise?"

"Here," the woman refers to the brothel once more. She looks at her for a long interval with a knowing stare beneath those thick lashes and blue-shadowed eyes. "I'm afraid not."

From that answer, she begins to tread away.

"Hey, where're you going?"

"To find Anise."

She leaves, and the parting words soon follow: "oh, poor lost princess."

Taking in a quiet breath, she cloaks her shawl over her head, wishing that no one takes notice of her hair. More often than not, her retainers comment how rare and beautiful the shade is when they brush it for her, yet color always serves as a great reminder in her life. How such small likeness incurs the Queen's spite, and for a time, draws in scrutinizing eyes to her.

_You look like your father_, that gentle woman will say. Anise, she corrects. Her name is Anise.

She sighs softly under her breath.

Perhaps, it has begun with a steady ache.

For years, it then swells twice her size, and the weight of such feeling overcomes her, tenfold.

It bleeds through her dreams, somehow. Folds in those nights, buries within the ancient secrets of the palace walls—until, perhaps, it reaches her bed. She falls from the sentiment, however. Has fallen for so long from oceans upon oceans of strange dreams that weave seamlessly into memories regardless, drowned at the sights, scents, and sensations of each and every one. How personal they have all been, how _real_ they feel.

And yet still: deep within her bones, she knows that she's not Balbadd's Princess. She's not a harlot's daughter, either.

_My real mother died from a stroke._

But here she is, in the middle of nowhere, venturing out on her own to find this stranger.

For truth, for some semblance of existential peace? Perhaps, that makes more sense in the midst of things. More so, than having to perpetually reason with herself that it is rooted from a child's innate need to be with its mother. Because she has long since passed that stage, a lifetime ago.

"_Princess Amestris,_" a reprimanding voice thunders behind her, and her feet seems to have lost all motivation to move forward. She doesn't dare turn around, but she wishes she has the gall to leap into a sprint at least, even though her chances of escaping are slim against a trained general.

The heavy clanking of armor nears, and then a sigh trails after. "Princess. I know it's you."

"Barkak," her head turns and an uneasy simper stretches wide on her lips. "I told you before. Ame is fine. _Just_ Ame."

With two royal guards behind him, Barkak doesn't return a smile of his own and he never fails to remind—_admonish_ her, rather, of her blatant informality and lack of reservation. Will a girl of nine summers grasp the very gravity of his words, Ame doesn't know. She pretends to not understand.

Then Barkak clears his throat. "And my dagger," his large hand is open, waiting.

"Oh," Ame blinks at him before revealing the dagger tucked under her shirt and surrendering it to its owner. It is pretty, the dagger. _Sasanian steel_, she recalls, eyeing the fine curve of the blade, how it gleams silver against the light. "I took it for a good reason," the right word for it is _stole_, but she prefers ignoring it, smilingly: "for self-defense."

"That hardly matters if you are protected within the palace."

"I suppose," says Ame, with a shrug. "Did Father send you to find me?"

There is a second of hesitation. "The King is informed," he doesn't elaborate further about it, but he does vehemently pursue on the subject of her absence. "It's been two days, Princess. I understand that you had a quarrel with the Crown Prince, but that serves no excuse for such irresponsibility. What could've happened to you, for leaving everything behind?"

Ame flinches. She will have claimed that she is already used to his raised voice when he commands the royal guards or a troop of soldiers. After all, his voice is always full and booming, even in the simplest conversations, because his left ear has gone deaf from the heat of battle years ago and he is struggling to hear with the other.

However while the way Barkak speaks is understandably loud, he has never raised his voice in that manner to her. Not once.

"I," Ame tries to collect herself, nails biting into the flesh of her palms. "I'm sorry, Barkak. I was reckless."

Ame swallows a breath, swallows the guilt, when she has the nerve to stare back at his scolding glare, the slightest concern lines dented above his brows. "I forgot myself," she confesses. She can't stand it, though; her words sound too offhanded, too sincere. "Ahbmad said I didn't come from noble birth."

A long sigh rolls off his mouth. Barkak then kneels before her, letting their eyes meet. "You were sired and raised within the palace the moment you were born," he tells her. She believes him and his stern honesty; he's been the only honest one, in a palace full of snakes and silver-tongued nobles. "The royal blood of the Saluja flows in your veins. You are our Princess, remember that well."

Ame breathes in, out. Ingesting the words like hot bile on her throat. "Of course," she bobs her head, a blond strand falling under brow. "I will keep it in mind."

"Good. Shall we return?"

There is nowhere else to go, after all. She acquiesces.

As they stride together in their departure, Barkak observes their surroundings. He scrutinizes the dirt road, the brothels and their scantily-clad prostitutes beckoning outside perfumed doors, the raucous streets brimming with people, beggars, and swindling traders with fat rats scuttling beneath their feet. His gaze then lands to her. "This place . . . it must have startled you," he contemplates, thinking, perhaps, that such flashes of hideousness must have shocked his princess. Maybe sully her eyes, even.

However something else bothers her immensely, a wave of strange nostalgia overwhelming her chest. The grimy hands, the scum, and all.

"Barkak."

"Yes, Princess?"

"I know," Ame starts; for a moment, reluctant, "I know I don't belong here."

"Indeed, you don't," Barkak can only nod, but Ame doesn't believe he can ever comprehend what she truly means.

Though the lavish palace in the heart of the city, and the slums at the edges of its walls, and the poverty of it all _is_ familiar.

The bastard child from those dreams may have lived this life once.

_But I never belonged here._

* * *

**A/N:** May subject to change. Not edited yet.

Sooo, I shouldn't be writing this, but the idea just wouldn't leave me alone for days. So far, you're free to speculate over the very short and uneventful prologue. I kid you not, filling in the role of Alibaba merits a massive AU, but of course, I will still keep _some_ canon plot beats every now and then. Another thing to note, she doesn't know batshit about Magi, so she's going in here blind. Lastly, this is basically going to have the same treatment as my other SI!OC fic and there'll be OCs as well.

The next chapter is a monster, a goddamn _lengthy_ monster.

* * *

**Permanent Disclaimer: I do not own Magi**


	2. hiraeth i

**10/10/19: Re-edited w/ major revisions**

[1] _To iluvfairytales_: Thank you for pointing that out! I didn't realize that part felt rather disjointed when I began re-editing again. I revised the scene in this for clarity and a better flow.

[2] To be honest, I couldn't stand how this chapter didn't pan out well for me after posting it. So I decided to revise it and add more to it so it doesn't feel abrupt at certain points. Hopefully, for everyone's sake and mine, I won't be massively revising chapters after I've already posted them. That kind of stuff is meant for editing. The chapter is _longer_. I hope it answers some questions.

[3] Warning: Graphic imagery of being burned alive.

* * *

A sweeping wind comes, and so follows the rain.

By the evening, their small party has sojourned a night in a local inn; a _decent_ one—a matter which Barkak is very particular in ensuring, as they have not traveled far ahead the slum districts.

The rain season is a pleasant balm against the end of summer. The air remains mildly humid, but it smells of wet earth and sea breeze and hibiscus—fragrant from the shop, next to the inn. Unobscured by draperies, the window becomes her single eye to the world; a strange world still, of silhouettes fogged by mist and rainfall. A silvery dream that sings to her. Pitter-patter it goes, like soft heartbeats, like a lullaby.

It's a wistful song, but Ame listens, regardless.

Until the intervention of the innkeeper's daughter, who serves her a warm meal of lamb stew and flatbread. The girl also timidly offers a plate of Mashreqi cookies as a receptive gift—or rather, a compensation for catering a humble dish unfit for a highborn. Supper becomes a quiet affair. One that she has spent ages living throughout in her own chambers.

Ame then turns to her guards stationed outside her door, stubbornly insisting she trade her Mashreqi cookies for the small oranges packed by one of the two. While both men are reluctant of the prospect, she has managed to win over the oranges in the end. Whether it's because she's the princess or that they choose to abide by it doesn't matter. They will appreciate the cookies more than she will. Besides, the oranges are ripe.

A trade of sweets goes well with conversation, she thinks.

Years in the palace has taught her that the illusion of unaffected royalty is a balk for social exchanges, and the stiff formality that comes with it always makes her eyes roll. Their surprise is quite anticipated, if not a little redundant, the moment Ame opens her mouth and speaks. She prides it is her talent. An uncompromising skill to disarm people with words.

She breaks bread and soon learns something from her guards; Kumar stutters quite often, and Gadi is more unguarded in his words and is the first to comment on her 'talkety' behavior, which he minutely apologizes for being discourteous.

"Is just tha' you sound like me niece, she's south from 'ere. Small thing, but she's like tha' too," Gadi confesses. "Likes to talk and ask lots'a things," and then he clears his throat, "Yer Grace."

"Are the oranges from the south too?"

"All tha' I could get, yeah."

"There's plenty of orange trees there. Sometimes, you can just pluck one or two," Ame smiles to herself. The taste of the fruit brings something close to tart-sweetness and nostalgia. "Someone told me once that the sweetest come from the south."

Gadi nods in agreement, but Kumar is more observant than what he lets on. "Y-you've been to the south, Princess?"

"No," she can't decide whether it's a lie or not. "I knew someone who did, though."

"Kumar. Gadi."

"_General._"

Barkak returns. He always wears civil authority like an armor, and it spears through the bubble of laid-back ease that she has carefully constructed for a time now. Both guards rise up like bamboo shoots from the floor, all rigid and rim-rod straight.

Ame remains insouciantly where she is, sitting on the ground as if it is made of wool carpets. Chewing on an orange wedge, she blames Barkak for not lacking any sense of reservation.

And now his chiding eyes lands on her. "Princess, why are you outside your room?"

"I don't have a good excuse," Ame shrugs, peeling the fruit in her hands. "For the oranges, I suppose."

Barkak represses a sigh. "The two of you can take your breaks. I will guard the Princess for the meantime. You are dismissed."

Gadi and Kumar only salute and then turn a heel, leaving in unison. Her stare lingers at them for a second more before losing interest and darting a cursory glance at Barkak who takes it upon himself to gesture her to her room. "I was convincing, you know," she rises, patting down her skirt. "I would have passed as a merchant's daughter."

"But you're not, Princess," Barkak follows her inside after closing the door behind him. "You didn't have to act like one."

_You don't have to remind me_, she will have bitten back from a retort, but she remembers that this is Barkak who speaks earnestly in a loud voice and louder intentions. Barkak who sees it as his solemn duty to reproach and repeat and remind her of _who_ she is and what it all means. Barkak, her hulking stubborn guard.

Absentmindedly, a part of her surmises the prospect of him having children. Perhaps, that will elevate his heavy-brow, or just make him a tad more coddling than chastising. Someone spoiling her rotten is nice. Ame is a princess, yes, but affection is one thing that is hard to come by, amidst pageantry and half-hearted gifts. Is it earned, though? She isn't quite certain anymore. There is always much to question in its sincerity.

That is one of the reasons why Ame does appreciate Barkak's company. He isn't very difficult to read.

However, her only gripe is that he isn't a good conversationalist. Not that he has to. Ame always does the talking. "I'm aware, Barkak," she plops back unceremoniously at the side of her bed. "How did you find me, anyway?"

"We've conducted a search party for you since the first night of your disappearance," he tells her, taking a seat on a nearby chair. "I happen to trace you here."

Ame hums musingly in response.

"Princess . . . had you been well, out here?" Barkak starts, his concern saturating his tone, "in your _condition_."

"Is of no consequence, as of late. I'm _fine_. Healthy as can be."

"Where have you even slept? How did you fare by yourself? Did someone—"

"No. I am fine," Ame cuts in, before the nagging assumptions take over. "I happen to know my way around, you see," her lips curl up into a grin; too audacious and too much teeth for a docile little princess to ever bare to any man.

This time, Barkak looks at her deeply, meaningfully. His fingers are threaded together in anxious contemplation.

"How did you even wind up in a place like this?"

Ame almost laughs. That makes for an interesting question.

—

_After all, she'd been so far, far away from home._

—

Amestris Saluja isn't born just _because_.

It takes very little effort to ruminate about the mystery of her birth. Because the truth of the matter is that there is no mystery to be solved and what small intrigue the court has pored on this child—hearsays of a mistress, the King's secret—has long since been silenced, though never truly forgotten. One may mull over the finer details, the snarled threads of lies about her blood-writ heritage, but against broader strokes and the whole of the big picture—she has no place in anything.

Her birth isn't an event that is celebrated, nor is it a grand one; one that is especially made for her to suit the role of being the heir that is born from a political marriage, of being the seed that will cultivate two long proud lines of royalty.

When she is born, she simply _is_. There is no great purpose or expectation that weighs her down from the back of her shoulders. While she may revel on this freedom, she reflects on its price too, as the unsung princess, the daughter.

It sinks into her like the double-edge steel of a blade, carving on her being; not with a crown, but with a name.

"_Saluja._"

Her wet nurse has once mouthed for her.

"_You are a Saluja._"

As a suckling babe, she learns that she leads a life of contradictions.

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, she responds as any child will, and yet she doesn't. She blinks, but contemplates—deeply, broodingly contemplates. The language uttered is foreign. From where in particular, she doesn't care. So long that she has a solid grasp that it is foreign, however what frustrates her is how she _understands_ it. Drawing in a shaky breath, she still has time to burn anyway, so she thinks. Copes. Cries.

"_Hush, hush. You might not comprehend what I mean now, little princess,_" says her wet nurse, cradling her close in her arms. "_But you will soon._"

—

In the eyes of an infant, the world moves slowly, the words come slowly, the truth unravels _slowly_, until the day arrives unannounced and the truth drops at her like an anchor—then she sinks. The hot humid days melt into months, the rain seasons mark the years, and once she is capable of walking, there she realizes from a startling discovery that one night ago that the stars aren't aligned right. Just as much as everything else is.

She grows a little; a staggering mess still, but she grows a little more into her own skin, grows a little on the patterns and shifts of behaviors in the air, grows a little in a palace made of precious limestone and marble, of century-old tapestries, of solitude. The people both remain more a stranger than a friend and a friend more than a stranger. She doesn't trust her Tamra nursemaid all that much, either.

Three summers old, she learns her name bears regality; elegant and heavy, like a diadem against the brow. Her bearings suit her name, as blue and true as the blood that she shares with the King, but the latter, she does admit, isn't as true—or _pure_—as it does in appearance, like the many bastards that retributively take after their father's face.

"That is the name I would have given to my daughter," the Queen will often remark from her crib, clutching her belly, as if to bitterly remind her, _you are not one of mine._

"The name of a true queen."

When spoken upon the mouth, _Amestris_ holds the promise of majesty and a ruler's conviction. All of which, she lacks and does little to live up to. Perhaps, this is why she holds a certain kinship to its shadow, _Ame_. Ame who is bare of all royal ostentations. Ame who is plain and pleasant enough to the ear.

She leans onto it, ties it closely to her chest, because while her servants and her warm orchards and her rose-gold dresses all belong to the crown, this one is her own. Even though she possesses another name, another face, another world, behind the flashes in her eyes.

She is Ame, and she can make peace with that, with what she has left behind.

—

The first night she turns four, Ame dreams of fire.

In that sea of roaring gold, she unravels from the thread of her hair. The flames shred fat and muscle before it turns into cinders, slowly, intimately almost. The bubbling skin of her arms melt from bone, snaps joints, bursts seams upon seams of veins into bloody sprays.

There is no air; only heat, only drouth. Her mouth drinks in smoke, like hot dark honey pouring down her throat. It hangs thick there, clogging and choking her from her lungs, until tears well from her eyes and all drop of moisture shrivels out of her tongue.

It smells of burnt meat. It smells of her, scorching alive with a heavy shroud hanging over her head. Above her, however, she absentmindedly mistakes it as a widow's veil against her hair—or rather, what is left of it. Bone, dust, waves of wildfire.

The world falls, perhaps. Fire reigns.

—

Then miraculously, perhaps deliriously, a golden lock of her hair bleeds into sunlight between her fingers, where it should have been catching up in flames, but her scalp still aches. The last of the fire ends in a rasped gasp, the crackling turns into faint footfalls . . . it reeks of smoke, but this time, she thinks wearily, numbly, it isn't her.

"—_Alibaba!_"

. . . it _isn't_ her.

—

Ame struggles a breath. Her chest throbs. Everything does; her short limbs, the hot scab from her palm. _It's going to scar_, she thinks absentmindedly. Her nursemaids will make a fuss. The moment she attempts to curl her fingers in, she doesn't understand the feeling. Not the pain, not the scorch of a mild burn, but simply, how it feels to be a stranger . . . of her own body.

The world is a blur, still. The vertigo slows, the ground steadies; not one of luxurious carpets and marble but of dry earth. She feels different, thin and filthy, as if poverty has eaten her within, marked her so thoroughly. A trail of blood falls from her brow, drops from her chin—

Warmth.

The warmth of a hand. The touch of someone shocks her senseless, but it isn't unwelcome and she concentrates on the sensation. It's too tender, too soft—startlingly _real_, skin against skin. It makes the hairs of her back stand, makes her shiver a little, because she remembers fire on flesh and the pain of it seems to be the most familiar thing amidst everything.

Hazes of color forms into shapes, moving figures whirling about. There's a commotion somewhere, a cacophony echoing from a crowd—_Water! Bring water o'er 'ere! Hurry, fire's catchin', dammit!—_and loud footfalls follow after, making the ground shudder and grow restless. She sucks a breath and coughs. The air tastes acrid, dust-polluted. It stinks of piss and burnt tries to register her surroundings, but her mind is too clouded and dark spots are starting to blot her vision. Everything is bending and bleeding in the chaos.

"Alibaba!"

Her eyes trace a portrait of a youthful face, etched by memory somehow. Dark hair, red lips, blue shadows over brown eyes—bright ones, as with dark amber against the light. A girl . . . a woman, somewhere in between.

". . . who," mumbles Ame, but it sounds more like a hiccup than a word. _Who is—_

The action is swift and unhesitant; the suddenness overtakes Ame in a quiet gasp, when there is so much to mull about in all this foreign affection, this warmth, from the woman's embrace. She is then lifted up in her arms. "Ali, everything's going to be all right. I'm here."

Her mind is spinning again. It's an unrelenting spin, one that confounds, one that circles around strange voices and colors and scents. Ame sinks further onto the woman's shoulders, almost melds against her as if this is where she belongs. She closes her eyes.

"_I'm here."_

Then the darkness claims her, carrying her to this strange path, to another lifetime in a dream.

—

As young Ali, Ame is five summers old now, a shy away from turning six. She is a child capable of obedience and running small errands for her mother; sweeping, cleaning, replacing coverlets, washing dishes, hanging linen to dry, filling out water jars, keeping check of their stock of foodstuffs for roaches and rodents.

There isn't a day Ame isn't moving about. Sometimes, she comes over to Nana Esmine and aids her in rolling clumps of dough and taking out flatbread from a clay oven, which Nana Esmine often offers three generous pieces and a little leftover sheep cheese to her after a long day in the bakehouse. Sometimes, she helps Ishak pluck out oranges from their tall branches, or helps the elderly women lift their reed baskets from the laundering pools, or helps the old tanner Temel cord in some of his leathers to his cart. She doesn't lend a hand to vendors, though. They're overprotective of their goods and make a point to punish slum children for thieving, with a chopped-off finger.

When there is still time to spare, Ame mills about the bazaar and idly picks on worthless change from the ground. That, or goes to the waste yard and mingle around scruffy children that have nothing else to do but loiter around like kings and start footraces against each other. There's an older boy she often argues with, but she doesn't remember his name.

Just after noontide, when the skies burn away their shimmering blue and the crickets chime in their tune, she scuttles back home and wipes herself clean before her mother arrives. She waits.

Mama always returns in the evening, whenever the sun touches the distant sea and the dusk follows her eyes. She will smile at her, as she does to the neighbors and the old launderers and her patrons. The mere glimpse of it makes her understand why they are so drawn to it.

"Mama."

Approaching the bed, her body goes limp against the crumpled sheets. There is a smattering of discolored petals on the skin of her thighs, echoes a thought. Innocent, faultless—the consciousness belongs to the boy, still too young and oblivious to the workings of the world.

_Fingermarks_, Ame thinks. There shouldn't be a pretty way to put it. Pensive at the sight, she covers them with blankets, and with a clean washcloth, her small hand attempts to remove the pearl powder and the mineral pigments brushed above her eyes. Blue, she muses wistfully. A dark blue, like midnight and livid bruises. A red stain smears the side of her lips.

The days grind on like this, rolling over and over, like the turning spokes of a wheel. Her mother is taken away in the morning. She is still young, still beautiful, to latch herself close within the arms of a nobleman. She has every sensible reason to disappear, to never return—but she doesn't.

"Ali," Mama breathes out, voice hoarse and searching. "Ah, Alibaba. . ."

Ame stops. Mama smiles a jaded smile. _How can she still—_

Her hand pulls out the covers for her. She reeks of perfume. "It's time to sleep. Come, come."

"Mama," murmurs Ame, next to her. "I—"

"I love you, Ali."

". . . I know."

—

The long dream ends by the second year. Ame wakes as the Princess after six nights.

—

It has come out of nowhere when it has happened.

A fire has swept through the Princess's chambers. _A curious fire_, Sesostris muses, with hot flames that threaten to melt steel and turn stone to coal. Had he not interfered at the time, the east of the keep will have been a blackened crisp.

One will think treason, another an assassination attempt, but whatever the cost, be it dolls, trinkets, a bed of brocade and woven wool, and a wardrobe of silk garbs; the most peculiar happening is how the child survives, miraculously.

However, Sesostris still shudders to reminisce of the girl. The burns will heal with rukh-infused water and sleep shall do the rest. It is the fever that makes him anxious of his own capabilities, of his slightest incompetence as a healer. Because of some foul sickness that has befallen her, he is aware that he can't use his healing ability to the fullest. Fire magic might overwhelm her.

In the first night, Sesostris finally gives this sickness a name.

_Epialos_ is what the Akaeans call it. The feverish chill, the black dream; it is a fitting and wretched name all the same. It is a night that echoes with screaming. Sweltering in her own skin, the Princess writhes in her dreams and even her strange rukh tremble from her malady.

There are only symptoms for Epialos, but the study stops at that point. A cure is uncertain. Sesostris can't procure a remedy from half-guesses of nightshade, fennel herb, and silphium. Hours and hours are labored for her well-being, tended and washed and cooled in a pool of water imbued with life rukh. He remembers how they seem to glow and drown in his gamble, but it eases the child, for a time.

The four nights that follow are almost ritual. The Princess sleeps, struggles in her fight, and shrivels whenever the fever returns for her in small fits of late-hour chills and muted madness. The screaming has stopped, though she still thrashes under her sweat-soaked sheets and her atrophied body, despite several attempts to revitalize her strength. Sesostris suffers during these days the most; wan and partially depleted of his magoi.

At a crucial low point, Sesostris teeters between saving the life of a girl and saving whatever is left of his own. Signs of wear start to affect him from unhealthy measures. Tribulation comes in the form of a Tamra vizier that offers gold to leave the frail child behind, a fleeting temptation; _she'll die, anyway_, he enthuses. However, flushing and rasping out breaths, she straddles at the edge, _still holding on_. The vizier underestimates him and her. He refuses to abandon his crusade.

It is until the sixth night that she shivers back to consciousness, with no inkling and grasp of the world around her. Sesostris believes he can remedy that with therapy and magic. Regardless, she is awake and alive and that is all that matters. He welcomes her back with a smile.

So when Sesostris arrives with tidings of her recovery.

"She is awake."

Sesostris expects a look of relief from a father. However, there is only the king with a nod of approval.

The lack of affection is offensively disappointing.

"You have done well, Sesostris. Your efforts shall be paid handsomely for it."

"You will not see your daughter, Your Majesty?"

King Rashid hardly blinks at the suggestion. "In due time," he says, poring over his paperwork by the lamplight. Unfazed, diligent . . . distant. Once he meets a disapproving stare, he simply dabs his quill on an inkwell and writes. "How is she?"

Folding his arms over his chest, Sesostris answers in long threads; pragmatic speculations first and then the days he has spent with her.

Sesostris recounts how she rests and recuperates, her delicate constitutions, her deadpan silence. Then a short-lived moment where she has lost her memory, lost a sense of self in the confusion and track of time and fever dreams that has struck her in the night. _Is Epialos such a dreaded malady to break someone's mind?_ He only mulls over this with indefinite answers.

Nevertheless, it matters little because the girl is still but a child that hasn't lived her life fully yet. But she does recover them, gradually. That is a time where Sesostris is reminded that a persevered strength thrives within her. However, her eyes tell a different story and it marks at his soul.

There is a kind of worldly weariness in them . . . a disillusionment.

_A girl of four summers shouldn't have that gaze_, Sesostris muses, sighing. "She also keeps muttering a name in her sleep," he continues in his recollection. It is too common a name to be forgotten. "Hm . . . Anise, was it?"

In a fraction, the King's reaction is immediate, eyes pulsing wide in disbelief.

"Are you certain of this?"

Sesostris mildly gawks at him. King Rashid has never allowed himself to be _this_ affected by anything.

"Indeed, Your Majesty," replies Sesostris, surmising. "Is it . . . someone close to the Princess?"

—

There is an unspoken plead on her lips.

_Mama._

However when Ame wakes, she stirs like a ripple, because what gazes above her is an almost-reflection of herself. His dry hand rests above her forehead until it is lifted up, and all trace of affection leaves the space between them.

His eyes are inquisitive. Profound too, in its placid stare, as if a bank of thoughts burrow within them, turn its deep waters into murk, and they run like currents, always winding, always mulling in circles, of a hundred answers and a thousand conclusions. This personal, this skeptically close, he remains reserved and kingly, and she hates him for it.

Despite that, her father is the first to speak, the clinking gold atop his head second.

"Do you know who I am, child?"

Even if Ame does, she doesn't know him. He never lets her.

A childish spite overtakes Ame, deciding to reply in silence. However something clutches at her throat and she nearly cries it out, the memory of another. "I . . . I knew her," she trembles, blinking unwelcome tears. _But what's her name?_ She rummages; deep within the bowels of her soul, she searches for it, clawing through the mire because it's too precious to lose. Too painful to let go.

Rashid Saluja may never believe her, thinking the delusional words of a girl hold no meaning. Her father—the King, the untouched marble of a man, is too important, too distant in his greatness, to ever acknowledge the relevance of her small voice. It doesn't matter now what he thinks, when she is sick with fever and he is here, for whatever reason. She hopes he listens because her voice raises, rasped out with a certainty she doesn't know she has in her.

"Where is my mother?"

The King doesn't look at her but he answers, and for once, she hears him crack. "I don't know."

—

Ame remembers another woman that doesn't come from her dreams.

Dressed in the colors of the night, Queen Safiyya of Tamra is a woman that appears as if to have belonged in the paintings, as she enters her room in a vision of blues and violets; violet that flaunts power, violet that boasts of opulence, for violet is wealthier than gold and deeper than aristocratic blue. Where _royalty_ leaves many a nobleman's mouth, Ame thinks of larkspurs.

Strung in gold braid-covers, intricately plaited locks fall down her shoulders like tresses of black wisteria and flutters around a smooth olive neck, clasped with a heavily bejeweled necklace that run down her chest. _The Star of Arslan_. The Tamra heirloom sways with her, completes her more than a pearl-crusted crown that looks ornamental than regal.

"I have heard you lost your memory," she tells her, her voice deep, measured, and mocking graciousness. "You don't look like it."

Ame only stares and stares, until her beauty wears thin from memory and her eyes skins off the woman underneath.

Her footfalls dance in a flutter of taffeta skirts; so reminiscent of the shadow once looming over her crib that has sung no lullabies and has told no tales. Her lips curl distastefully. "Has the fever also taken your tongue, girl?"

"I remember," Ame answers. "Your Grace."

By the oil lamp, the Queen stands against its radiance, eclipsing the light in her morose colors, and when it finally hits her eyes, it's a sight that refuses to be forgotten. Silver eyes, shining like a pallid moon. There is something so vicious within them.

Their gazes meet. "And do you remember what I always tell you?"

_You are never meant to rule, little bird._

"Yes," Ame nods, gathering her thoughts. "I am a princess. . ."

"Yet it's an empty crown," Queen Safiyya chuckles without humor, "and you are nothing without it."

—

In another lifetime, from a thousand nights ago, it seems; straggled in her white bed where the sheets smother her in her sleep and each passing hour counts as her last, her real mother has once told her tales of wise kings and sphinxes that talk in riddles, of a sacred horn that shakes the earth and witches with silver teeth, of a god that offered man's fire and divine serpents that circled the high heavens and the earth.

All those and more, yet Ame cradles the story of a mythic bird in her chest.

_It is called Rukh, love. The bird that can never touch the earth._

Her heavy-lidded eyes sets her sights on a gold-white bird spread its little wings from the tip of her finger. Once it takes flight; untethered, unbound by the silken trappings of the windowsill, it soars towards the horizon. Before her consciousness slips from her lips, Ame mutters drowsily to herself: ". . .the freest amongst all."

No different to her mother, Ame drifts and dreams and hopes to fly.

—

The little girl walks like a ghost from the palace halls.

Her very existence seems to be written as one, Barkak understands. In the distance, under the heavy dark veil of the night, the Princess is too pale and too thin; a small delicate thing that might as well be swept away by the four winds. He finds her by chance and pale moonlight.

_The Princess is ill_, that is what Barkak simply knows. Word of mouth travels faster than wildfire, quick and unrepentant, and while he has spent a decade half-deaf to the mindless gossip of commoners and nobles alike, he is unable to resist the whispers that trails after the Princess.

It isn't unlikely occurrence: the entirety of the palace knows that the Princess sleepwalks.

A strange affliction, following a pattern of unconscious bouts that last for a day or so. Reports will come about how an immediate attack is unpredictable; a subject which healer-magicians and physicians regard as a conundrum. Maidservants will often find her body in the gardens or the servant quarters. The palace guards from the hallways. The cooks from the storages. The tale always spins. It never changes.

Though what doesn't is that the Princess remains a stray little girl. Lost and vulnerable in the midst of things.

"General."

However, Barkak realizes, the moment the Princess angles her head up to meet his stare, he sees that she's not asleep, not dazed, but not focused, either. The fog in her eyes is curiously reminiscent to the King's, and he only wonders why a child possesses such a gaze. One clouded with murk and deep in its thoughts. Yet something else speaks for them, glints in this darkness where little girls break into sobs and little boys cower under their mother's skirts.

The Princess is small, still. Fragile, as they claim, but her voice rings like brass and her gaze almost gleams. Perhaps, a faint flame resides within, he supposes, so faint as with the dull glow of embers. "You should not be out here in the dead of the night, Princess."

"I'll go back," she doesn't ask him to take her there; he does, however.

"I shall accompany you then."

She acquiesces, wordlessly.

—

Ame searches for a path, so she retraces her steps back to the slope of a small hill.

There are lights beneath her; all from mud-brick houses and candlelight within that glimmer like stars. It unfurls far and winding, a road from a distant world and a map of lights that are never few and far between to the Haruni Mahal. The bejeweled moon amidst the stars.

Yet Ame has never truly left her canopy bed. Sleeping, sighing for long stretches of nights, bemoaning why in her dreams, she is a lost boy who longs for a palace that can never be a home. So when she looks back, at the small shed of a makeshift house, the open arms of a woman wait for her and she returns.

—

"Ali, where've you been? You were out for too long!"

"Ehh, but it's not that late yet!"

"Well, hurry and wash up, Alibaba. No supper for you until those hands are clean."

—

". . . hm, had you been a little girl, Amestris might have suited you very much," Mama confesses, mulling over her question. "It was the name of a queen, you know. A queen wise before her years."

Her head simply bobs to the side. At the tender age of six, the child in her dreams doesn't delve deeper on the implication of her answer, but instead she lets her indecisive curiosity lead the way and her mouth runs with childish lisps and words: "b-but whydda give me my name then?"

Her eyes lands on hers and then her lips brighten into a smile at the sight of her. "Now, that was the name of a character I heard from an old story," recalls Mama, nostalgic of the tale. "A story of thieves and treasures, I think. To me, that person was special."

Ame awes. "Special?"

Mama holds her close in an embrace. "Yes, special. Always remember, Ali. You're special too," her arms are wound tight around her, as if Ame is slipping away between her fingers, "and you belong somewhere better than this."

With a rueful smile, Mama never tells where.

Ame doesn't mind. It's here with her, bundled together under the infinite stars.

—

Eight moons have gone by, and Ame still has the strength to scamper towards the textile district to buy thread for a favor. Her mind works on the pathways, mapping out a shortcut within the elaborate maze of the bazaar.

_It's strange_, Ame muses, how she has no recollection of what she's been doing beforehand. Time flutters by so quickly. She troubles herself with the thought of forgetting to refill the water jars before her departure.

Her bare feet burn raw from the road and her head is spinning from the vibrancy of the crowd and the colorful noise. Ame hears the bells toll in the distance, bellowing out the morning call for prayer. Offhanded, she almost tumbles back from the fire of an open griddle an arm's breadth apart, but she holds her step in a beat, catching the smoky notes of grease and meaty goat innards. Her stomach growls. She hasn't eaten since last night.

Then she sprints pass kebab carts and sweetbread stalls, crossing the herded parts of the spice route in a myriad of browns, powdery whites, sunbaked greens, cinnabar-reds, and mustard-ochres under disorganized rows of broad winnowing baskets. She idly sniffs, recognizing a few spices woven in the strong overwhelming scents of others.

She ducks in under the heavy cloth of an awning and her eyes pulse wide; the rustic colors shift from the ground and hang themselves brilliantly against the sun, embellishing shops with patterned weaves and apparels, textile carpets and rugs, bolts of silk fabrics and wools and cotton, and spun thread of varied shades.

She marvels over saffron red and bright yellow dye and a rare blue that shares the color of lapis lazuli, as she wanders in hidden crevices that lead inside open ventilated areas where the textile-making occurs. Years in the waste yard has taught her well to break in and out of tunnels and watercourses to know her way around. At the sight of her, no one bats an eye. They mistake her as one of the child laborers that procure the dye from caldrons of mashed indigos and mulberries. Their hands are stained in a wretched dark violet-blue.

The heat from boiling pools are oppressive and the smell of dye is sharp and pungent. Ame ponders how the rats haven't gone faint from it. There are drapes hung in several rows, blinding the toilers that whisk cloth from the pools behind the air-dried sheets, and somehow, she finds herself poring over a large simmering basin of dye in the color of molten flesh. Fires are stoked underneath, roaring, rising for skin.

A quiet dread settles down her gut. A slow step back and then another. Ame gasps. Her hand shots up immediately from the burn of hot fabric behind her. From her palm, she is assaulted with the color of crimson. The same dark color under the flesh of her hand.

Muddled, Ame runs.

Her fingers push away cloth and silhouettes, searing her skin, painting her in mottled flames, and then from the edge—a bright light, the sun inches from her fingertips. She _reaches_.

—

From the other side, there is a hand stretching out to her like an old friend. A flock of star-white birds flutter over its palm, promising something like miracles and unventured destinies, but their dark-halves hide behind its wrist, leaving shadows on skin akin to bruises.

A persuasive pull beckons for her. Tells her to take it.

"_Believe in me."_

But—_but_ Ame resists. From the tremble of her heart, it speaks she must.

—

"_He brings nothing but paradise lost, my king."_

—

Sometimes, in those long dreams, regret is an intimate feeling most of all.

_Regret_, Ame thinks. That she doesn't understand.

Then fire. Then ruin.

—

Then ash. All that is left is pale ash.

". . . no. _No—_" whispers Ame, small tremors shuddering in her chest, until it subsides. Yet her hand still trembles. "Cotton," she corrects, relieved. Her eyes linger on the fallen boll, and then for a beat, to her unburnt palm; tracing its softness, its lines—or life paths, as the old maids call it. A deep crease halves the middle of her right palm and she recalls one of them claim that she is blessed to have a full long-lived life. Baseless palmistry she will rather scoff at.

Her hand clenches into a fist, tearing through cotton and skin. _I'm alive_, Ame reminds herself, realizing she has been unconscious beneath the scarce shade of a cotton tree. The sun tangles between its branches. She breathes in. It smells of earth and date palms and thyme shrubs—then it is misted over with something gentle and hazy. _Salty air_, she recollects, or rather attempts to. _Ah, the sea. _Her left hand curls at a thatch of grass, dew sticking between her fingers. She breathes out.

Everything else resurfaces.

Her head still throbs.

It takes time, Ame knows. Step by step, word by word. _It'll help_, says a voice of some healer. _Just repeat yourself._

_I am—_

"By the Rukh, Princess Amestris!"

A face of a woman comes into view, a familiar face. Ame feels a little glad. She feels as if she's never seen a face for _years_. One that is flushed red with health and alive. Warm hands grasp her shoulders; the small round shoulders of a _child_, still. "Oh my, has it happened again, my lady? Had you fallen?"

Ame looks at the maidservant, at the glimpse of her reflection staring back at her from those waiting eyes.

"I don't remember."

Remember and disremember, rewind and repeat. It always happens, whenever she sleeps and is stuck in an eternal limbo.

"You need to see Lord Sesostris."

—

In her recollection: the first time Ame decidedly speaks to the Heliohapt healer is when she is presented a rich man's feast.

It unpacks itself in the form of a wide bountiful spread of thin yoghurt soup with chickpeas, leavened flatbread, and a crock of side dishes varying with goat cheese, humus, sausage, veal liver, fava beans, rice, herbed yoghurt, and a salad of mixed greens drenched in olive oil and lemon juice. There is a decadent meat stew mixed with okra and eggplant in a steaming earthen pot, kebab stringed in skewers, baked seabream, and baclava. Fresh fruit is also served with a cluster of red Reiman grapes, mandarin oranges, apricots, and pears.

From a distant corner of her mind, Ame knows she can feed an entire slum neighborhood with this. In the dreaming, she's only ever been intimate with the taste of poverty.

However, her healer has different concerns. Displeased by the display of incompetence, he rebukes a throng of servants for failing to follow his instruction of not serving her a heavy meal as it will upset her stomach during her period of recovery.

When the suggestion of clearing out the dishes is brought up by a maidservant, Ame speaks up to him. "No. They're going to throw it away after. It'd be a waste."

For a moment, Ame wonders if they have come to an understanding after that. Her healer abides, though he forbids her to eat anything but soup and morsels of bread. In a dull attempt to be amiable, she tells him to help himself from the spread, but in his own way, he is reserved and courteous, not quite refusing and not quite indulging in such a feast. He decidedly plucks out a measly cluster of grapes.

What's happened to the spread, Ame is uncertain. A pang of guilt consumes her for a time, after voicing out a proffer that is met with a downturn of his lips and the words that trail out of them: "You're a generous Princess, though I'm afraid no one will venture out to the slums; if not for fear of being mangled by the starving, then for taking this grace for his own."

Despite her disappointment back then, their exchanges have never stopped there ever since, and as the one who takes responsibility over her, Sesostris Usire-Benn tries to maintain it that way.

"Princess Amestris."

"Seso," Ame smiles at him from the choking comfort of her bed.

Seso doesn't return a smile of his own, either from her sudden bout or for carelessly tossing out an unsuitable pet name. Regardless, he doesn't speak of it, as he sits down on a cushioned chair. "How do you feel, Princess?"

Sitting up, Ame hums. "Dizzy. Head hurts like a bitch."

"_Language_," Seso chastises. "Where did you even—"

"The guards," her mouth twists amusedly from his grimace, as Ame recalls in mock innocence: "they act funny when they're drunk."

"Duly noted," Seso nods, but his turquoise eyes gleam in the similar manner he is about to rebuke someone for his shortcomings—or _plans_ to, seems more like it.

Seso promptly starts a quick check-up that has become a routine at this point. It's strange that he has no need for stethoscopes and a few medical equipment for an exam. Perhaps, it's the antiquity of the time, or the exceptional gift of a healer-magician.

Not fraudulence or mere sleight of hand; magic _exists_. In this world, such uncanniness is broadly considered real and natural and _pure_, where dungeons spring forth the earth, man can metamorphose into djinn, and magic is wielded by those rare chosen few by birth. These kind of things . . . they're the stuff of legends, though they are true—true as the flesh and bone of this Heliohapt man before her.

By some practice unknown to her, his bird staff emits a wispy kind of warmth during the procedure. The feeling it gives absentmindedly reminds her of being submerged in hot bathwater. _It's supposed to be that way_, Seso has admitted to her once. A calming effect where the limbs grow pliant and melts away tension. Sometimes, if Ame squints closely, she sees _something_ reflected from the turquoise eyes of a gold-brass heron; its feathers glittering almost, from what appears like a swarm of glass-winged creatures.

"—what did you dream about, this time?" Seso asks.

Dumbfounded, Ame blinks at the question.

Raising her chin up, Seso inspects her face and her eyes. Next comes her ears. "Is it about the woman again, or perhaps, the boy, the bird?"

Ame stiffens. She has never told anyone about her dreams but him. Though, it's never been truly easy confiding anyone about them. "No," she starts, conscious of her words, as she presses her lips together: ". . .it was the fire."

"Ah," as if driven by instinct, Seso closes near her and gives her that deep meaningful stare; once, a stare, Ame reminisces, that is laden with concern, when the dream has first consumed her for three nights, and upon waking, she is at loss of the world around her, of the faces and the names, of _herself_. "Remember, Princess," he says in a soothing voice. "It's not real. It never was."

_But it is. Somehow, I know it is._

Ame resigns herself to a sigh. "I know."

Seso bobs his head, proceeding on his ministrations. Ame attempts to distract herself on the blue and red teardrop earrings glinting beneath his ash-white hair; another matter to mull about, she thinks, as his hair is long and thick, strung meticulously with citron-green lotus glass that brushes on a gold viper neckband wrapped around his long neck. He wears a part of his home, almost flaunts them in a way.

However, what eventually catches her attention is the wink of a bright stone eye; the color of fiery crimson, jutting atop the golden band of his middle finger. "That's quite . . . a unique-looking ring, Seso."

"Is it now? Well, I suppose so," Seso agrees, giving it a precursory glance. "It's one of its kind."

"Hm, the emblem is the head of a bird," Ame tries to distinguish the creature that curls around the crown of the ring; its blue-inked wings wrapping upon itself and its beak and head protruding over them. "Ah . . . is it a heron?"

"Almost correct," Seso says, pleased of her guess. "It is the Sunbird."

"Oh, what about the Sunbird?"

"It's a rather silly tale," Seso admits, slightly cringing at thought of it even, but that kind of genuine response from him only stokes up her curiosity. "Quite a mouthful too, to be honest."

"But I adore a long story," prompts Ame.

"Perhaps, another time, Princess," Seso tells her gently, shaking his head. "You need to rest."

—

Ame realizes that she is once again trapped in her stagnancy.

Swaddled in her quilted sheets, limbs weak and chafed from their crepe-thin sleeves, Ame is entombed in the humidity of her room and the impending languor of sleeping draught and khus khus essence that turns her blood into lead. The canopy awning of her bed is privy to her thoughts.

A wistful part of her gives in to reminiscence; in lieu of hairpins are flower crowns, small and common flowers by the shore, woven by weary hands. She remembers the kindness of others too, but she always forgets their names. "I'll try . . . I'll try to remember," she promises.

Ame sinks into the sentiment the moment her eyelids grow heavy and her vision blurs, bends the bleak colors of the world, from the lull coaxing of those obscure dreams. She stares at the tall latticed window, half-drawn, half-hidden, and accepts this reality. She wakes, and she watches a finch spread its blue wings, only from afar.

There is a birdsong in the distance, and absentmindedly, Ame thinks it's for her.

—

Sometimes, Ame can see them. Shimmering in the air like pale flecks against rushing water. _Pieces of the sun_, she likes to believe. This is her little secret and she never shares about it.

—

Alibaba has never heard of snow since he has turned eight.

Ame remembers; though winters in Balbadd aren't that of snow, they are rain. No one loves the rain more than the poor.

Rainfall cools. Rainfall cleanses. Rainfall quenches the drouth of the dry season. And while it is rainfall that drowns the houses and streets with flood, seldom as they are, many a man needs the rain still when they believe it brings forth the purest water.

Water is available to all, but in the slums, it's filthy. The waters flowing from the canals are overrun with waste and even those from the common wells have their impurities. Ame has to wait for minutes for the water to settle and the grime to sink at the bottom of their water jars for it to be usable. Clean drinking water is either boiled or bought. People die more commonly by disease from soiled water than that of thirst.

_The purest water._ Ame will rather contradict that. Though once the skies darken and the breeze is heavy with moisture, she sees deliverance.

There is a variety of stories about the rain, and they weave around the rest of Balbadd that one can almost make a tapestry out of them, if every story is to be each stitch and thread; to everyone, a different deity and a different tale, about the rain being a gift, a promise, a blessing by a god worshipped upon their lips. _The Mercy of Mata Omisha_, or as what most call her, Ina, the mother of all, is known more reverently by the people.

"It is our Ina that delivers the rain down the earth through a long song. The drouths, the famines; all washed away once she sings and the world weeps in joy. The water is pure and that's why we must store every last drop of it, Ali," Mama tells her as they listen to the pleasant cadence of the rain spattering down in beats and trickling over their half-full water jars.

"Mama, but why does Ina give rain?" Ame stretches out her hand from the shed, wetting her palm. Mellow rain, gentle winds, pitter-patter songs by the puddles and the footfalls and the holed raft-roofs.

"It's because Ina is a mama, too. She'll always love her children," says Mama, smiling fondly at her curiosity. She looks up, her eyes bright and hopeful. "Ali . . . when you were born, the rain came and she sung for you."

—

Before the death of a world, before the death of a ghost, before every deconstruction and reconstruction of the very fabric of her being, there is the endless fall. Before rebirth, she isn't a princess, she isn't a boy, she isn't anything much.

Perhaps, a shapeless shadow of a woman that lost everything. _Everything_ is a dramatic word for it, but that is for another tale to tell and another regret to burry six-feet under the cove of her soul. However, there is one thing she does know and that is she's born from her bitterness.

Queen Safiyya is much too clever in her own way, as she sees through the thinly veiled guise of Ame's child-like pretentions. It's too familiar and wretched, after all. Women like them, they're bound to be kindred spirits. Hear the black bile in their inflections, read off one another's insincerity.

Yet Ame ponders, still. _There's always a reason._

"Do you love him," Ame dares to ask, offhandedly honest and unflinching, "my father?"

Her painted lips twist, blurring the emotions within them. It is the most genuine reaction that Ame can have from this woman who dons on her prestige and pride by the cuff of her necklace and nothing short to them.

"Who doesn't, little bird? He is the King. He has power, beauty, and unmatched wit. He . . . he can have everything and everyone wants him. Of course, men like that, they can never belong to anyone," says the Queen, silvery eyes meeting the sunrise, where the stars fade and the night turns into a distant trilling memory. "They only belong to themselves, in the end."

That's the time, Ame realizes, that no one has ever wanted and hated her father more than his wife.

—

The first time Ame catches a glimpse of her half-brothers, she is five.

It's unthinkable, almost. That her older siblings have long since been an absent presence in her life for a few measly years. One will think, perhaps, it is because of their demanding lives, separated by tall walls and closed spaces. However, a different brand of poison dwells within there, something rooted-deep and dynastic. After all, her family has undergone this long line of dysfunction; the King's distance, the Queen's jealous contempt for her spouse, and the princes' willful blindness in everything else.

They don't see her because they refuse to. The eldest, Abhmad, haughty and toad-like, wears a bluster of conspicuous disdain, sashaying ahead of Sabhmad, the second one, voiceless and browbeaten in his slouch. Though Ame can't fault them when they are only children, cloistered by their ignorance, docile and weak to their mother's bidding.

_Bastard girl_, scoffs Abhmad. Sabhmad shies away, hunching under his brother's shadow. Their Tamra blood is prominent in their features with their gnarling dark curls, gray-blue eyes, and thick brows. They look _too_ much like their mother, and at the same time, _not at all_.

Ame says nothing, nonchalantly watching them strut forward the palace hallway.

Queen Safiyya is beautiful, and Ame thinks to herself how she can have such ugly half-brothers.

—

In the palace courtyard, Ahbmad complains.

Her older brother always does, to many a miniscule thing; to the stain in his dress pants, to the lentils in his soup, and now—to his pathetic stance, to his failure as a swordsman, which he blames on his sword master General Barkak. _How petty,_ Ame thinks. The General is patient, but he doesn't reserve his criticisms of his shortcomings, the harsh instructor that he is.

It isn't much of a pastime, not always an enjoyable one either at the very least. Ame doesn't waste time to watch Ahbmad be told off in his utmost chagrin, however she does spend the hours marveling over General Barkak's teachings on royal swordplay.

The fast-paced footwork, the quick jabs, the precision in the technique; Ame is struck with awe, how the short sword sings, how truly cutthroat it is beneath all that disciplined art and strict form. Something in her chest pulses, and for a heartbeat or so, she reminisces on _fencing_, her eagerness in a bout, the assuring weight of a sabre. Her hand, small and soft it may be, aches to remember, too.

One day, she confronts the General.

"Teach me."

Because it's the closest thing she can replace for fencing matches. Because it's the one thing she can love and claim as _hers_.

Barkak refuses. He is too impervious and too adamant to be swayed of the many attempts Ame has made to convince him. It stretches on for quite a while that even her persistence has become a favorite tale of sorts for the rumormongers. She pays it no mind. Her end lies with the promise of a short sword on her hand and she determines to fulfill it.

—

Ame is being reprimanded with steel.

The short sword rings hollow to her ears when she recalls. _Step, jab, block._ Ame side-steps from a swing. Their names escape her, but her actions speak for them, just as fluent when uttered aloud through a quick lunge and a parry. She _used_ to dance with a sabre.

Ame moves with instinct, mind precise and familiar with its footwork, as she has done a hundred times in a match, but it is difficult matching its rhythm and lightning-quick pace when her body is no longer accustomed to rigorous training. It's embarrassing, how she flails and fails and _falls_ all the same. She is on the ground, heaving shallow pants of air, without a short sword, without a single win against her opponent. Her weapon is broken in two. Her loss is also the loss of a sword master to teach her.

"You cannot fight like this, Princess," the General chastises and there's nothing but blistering truth to it: "not with your frail constitutions, not with your condition."

The sun glares beneath her and its unpleasant heat dulls her senses, but her ears are sharp, somehow. Listening, intaking each word like hot oil poured down her throat. The scorch of it running deep in her veins.

"You don't have to do this."

The burn doesn't heal, _it never does_, but Ame tries anyway, until the wound festers and it damages more than it scars. She is bedridden for a fortnight, beyond the reach of a blade. Seso shakes his head from her recklessness as he tends to her wounds. However it takes more than a few scratches to keep her from practicing by herself. Chuckling bitterly, she wonders if she'll ever learn, in this life or the last.

—

On restless nights, some will dream of monsters looming above their heads. Winged beasts with a woman's face, a chimera with poisoned fangs. However, the truest monster in her terror-filled nights are those of eyes like the sun that watch her shrivel away in her eternal pyre.

The dream persists and Ame doesn't have a voice to scream.

There is a great fire raining down the earth. The stars weep from their heavens; far brilliant cosmos and distant worlds, all reduced to streams of molten rock against the soil. The skies are a reflection of the crimson seas, and swarms of terrible beasts hover above, stone angels and winged griffons and massive red lions, roaring, ripping, _fighting_. Endless chaotic fighting.

Golden citadels are burnt black and dilapidated into debris; its peaks fallen, as if a piece of the sky has been hurtled down to the earth. She gazes up and the plaguing images of flame and smoke and ash rise up in its stead as infernal pillars. Then the clamor of wails and moans are thrown on the wind as the cities burn to the ground, rife of the stench of spent combustion and gore. Walls of stone broken, rebuilt, into that of flesh, mounting high into a pile till it rotted far below the sump.

Dreams have a strange concept of time, and so the seconds move like rivers that come from wayward rapids that spin than stream. Dawn without sunrise, night without tides, the days stretch on for a hundred years.

Her flesh burns for a thousand more. Ame longs for rain.

—

Ame starts and ends again in a never-ending blaze. Repeats, rewinds, renews. From the ashes of some forlorn past that she's never understood.

_Make it right, this time,_ whispers an ancient dream.

At the back of her mind, Ame thinks that she's been given too many chances. Perhaps, the world is kind—or cruel.

—

A short sword is exchanged for a tome.

For as long as Ame remembers, she has compared her existence to that of a meteor. Some aimless fallen rock that has crashed down on foreign soil. She has always known that she comes across like an anomaly, after all.

_A strange existence that shouldn't be here._

Only that, perhaps, Ame is more fortunate than most. While a bound gilded cage is inevitable, the privileges of a princess extends more than what she anticipates when she is old enough to be in a royal study and is offered with education.

_Etiquette, dance, poetry, singing, and instrument playing are the essentials that make a proper noblewoman_, are what the matron tutors advise when they discuss over her manner of dress, a woman's virtues, societal propriety, speech and inflections, and posture. While mannerisms are tolerable, she hates the rigidity of everything else and the clandestine impositions for little flowering girls that are tightly-laced around her when she knows all this pointless singing and dancing are supposed to impress upon a husband for a good dowry.

However, Ame makes certain to pursue her court studies when she is taught how to read and write. Arithmetic, history, and lengthy sessions about economics and trade; subjects which she understands are meant to be for boys that aspire to be lords, merchants, and scholars.

Wizened and highbrow, Lord Maitham answers loftily for her.

"Princess Amestris, we may be a small nation, but we learn our history well and accept our roots as mongers and traders. It is what built our country in the first place. Our men shrewd and our women pragmatic. The late Queen, bless her magnanimous soul, had shown this, when she opened trade routes and made fruitful decisions for the country's prosperity, as well as the daughters of Balbadd that have become the levelheaded brides of princes and shahs, kings and kaliphs of distant lands," he tells her musingly, stroking his thin beard. "_A Balbaddese Princess is well known for her wit_, as they say."

Ame decides to cling onto those words with pride. She studies harder ever since.

A strange twist of fate, Ame thinks, when knowledge turns into a blade.

—

The Haruni Mahal lies at the heart of the Great Siddharth Fort of Estafana; some will say amongst themselves, _the red sun o'er Aayushi's breast_, for its wide-reaching architecture that encompasses the expanse of a high hill arising from the riverbanks of Aayushi, fenced by seven main gates of sandstone from a century of civil war and sieges.

_An exaggeration_, Ame thinks. However, the palace complex is _massive_. One will think it can be its own city by the scope of its impressive size, lost within its grandeur and its walls. _Lost_, she reflects over the word again and how it accompanies the palace so fittingly. Perhaps, that's why she is forbidden to stray away from the east of the keep by her nursemaids.

Ame decides to rebel, regardless.

Insouciant, Ame strolls pass the Spired Lotus House of Lalehan Mahal by the fort reservoir; its crystalline waters running under in the likeness of an encapsulated lake. Far from here is the Gate of Ibrahim, named after one of the twin stars that points to the east. A little farther away is the Ruqaiyah Temple and the Tower of Enlightenment, a flaring pillar where the prayer bells toll, and then bastioned at the northeast is the Gate of Gökhan, named from the Celestial Stallion, the blue-tailed star that shines over the steppes of the Tenzan Plateau.

Wandering on the floating veranda, Ame contemplates about the water beneath the stone platform, of the aqueducts that carry its steady flow back to the river, of _tunnels_.

High noon fast approaches. Ame walks ahead the stone road, and from the path, southeast of the keep, is orchards of tall cypress and pine, thick-canopied ash, oak, and fir, and even the Anatole rose-dew tree that stretches its soft coral and roseate branches under the sun.

Ame remembers the poems about a prince that has taken his life from grief and from his blood springs the rose-dew tree. The warmth of the colors reflects the kindness of his heart and the sweet scent from his gentleness. A pink petal flutters down her palm. She thinks of Mama. Will she love one planted at the side of their home?

A languid breeze whistles through the trees, scrubs murmuring, blossoms swaying. A spray of white flowers brush against the side of shoulder. Curiously, Ame draws near them, catching their distinct scent like dark licorice. She tries to forage for a name, mulling over a spice of some kind. "Hmm . . . ah, anise, is it," her smile crumbles down, and then she repeats, slowly, surely, this time: "Anise."

Taking in a deep breath, Ame plucks the flower and twirls its spindly stalk between her fingers. Overtaken by a vague sense of familiarity, she tucks it close to her chest and never lets go. _Anise._

—

For the first time, it feels as if Ame has found a shard of an important undisclosed facet of herself that has been dislocated for years. She laughs, or maybe she sobs at the engraved ache of it thrumming from her veins. There's a poignancy in there, fluting in her ears alone in the memory of a flower, a dream, and a home. _Is it real, though?_ She prays it is. Some place farther from here. Perhaps, even nowhere.

It's a start. Ame draws a map in her mind.

_Nowhere is good._

—

Again, Ame dreams of fire. Again, she dreams of pain—of destruction, of death.

Of combustion in her veins, of the cinder bones in her hot melting skin. For what seems like the fortieth day, Ame prays why—she screams why—she curses _why_. Heavenly flame or hellfire, she doesn't care which is which. Fire like this, it shouldn't be touched by mortal hands, and it sears at the very fringes of her soul, as with greedy fingers that burn what they touch.

Despite it all, something in her tingles—a warmth, a flicker of some sort—and it always remains there, steady as a heartbeat, until perhaps that feeling rises up, and while she believes that she will explode into a million stars, it surges from the palm of her hand, sings in her boiling blood, and then—it erupts into flames.

Her hand _erupts_ into flames.

At this very moment, Ame knows this isn't a dream anymore. Her hands are on _fire_ and it's not burning flesh.

But it's not stopping, either.

Her teeth grit together and her mouth goes dry. _How do I put it out, dammit. Put it out. Make it stop. Stop._

Her breaths are ragged, unwinding, pushing out of her teeth, and her heart clogs at her throat in its erratic beat. Ame trembles from the flames on her fingertips, unfurling out in seams of brilliant harsh gold, where tiny vermillion birds flit towards them and dissolves in the heat. She can't scream as she paces about like a mad woman and attempts to drown it down with water. However the moment her hands come into contact with a water pitcher, it melts into liquid bronze, water bubbling oppressively into vapor. It stains a black brand on the carpet, foul-smelling and scorching, as it rises forth like an omen.

The fire achingly spreads around her wrists, and then it creeps around the sides of her arms like raised wings, singing the sleeves of her dress into ash and smoke. Her skin glows underneath like smelted iron, circled about with little red firebirds that plunge into the flames, and she doesn't understand. _She doesn't understand._

Ame closes her eyes shut when the fire flares brightly from her shoulders, closing to her neck, burning away fabric. Her necklace oozes around her lapels, stamping down a searing pain from her collar. She hisses.

_No . . . no, no. _ _Dammit, stop, stop, stop stopstopstop—_

And for a silent beat, it does. Finally, _finally_.

Shivering from her own skin, Ame stares into the ashes. Oblivious. Bleakly deadpan. A sigh shudders out of her lips and her face feels wet. This time, she allows herself to sob.

There is no scar marred on her palm, but it leaves one in her soul, for the longest time.

—

The Princess secludes herself for a fortnight.

There's no other reason for his arrival, saved for concern, perhaps; a concern born from his investment over the girl's wellbeing for a time. The troubling tidings comes first by his doorstep, and the second are written by the burns mottled on the skin of her collarbones, all raw and stinging and scarlet-pink. Sesostris does what he can when he heals the wounds. Though, he can't heal the spirit, not completely and not on his own.

Sesostris doesn't push her for answers, but he gently, gently asks.

"Who did this to you?"

The Princess only burrows herself deeper into the womb of her mattress, fetal and unresponsive. A terrified child. Her rukh speaks for her discomfort. When Sesostris realizes he can no longer tamper with her emotions, he decides that it's best to return in another day. Still, a fever crosses his mind when he recalls the insalubrious warmth of her skin, as with the unnaturally oppressive heat of her bedchambers.

The day after, Sesostris comes over with sympathy. Sleep, a loss in appetite, a skulking fright behind the shadows under her eyes. He asks if she still dreams. If she still remembers. She nods, sometimes. She doesn't on others.

No one visits. A harsh ordeal for a girl of six summers. Her distrust grows prevalent. Only an old maid tends to her needs now, a single outlet to the world. Though, communication is still not lost between them and he grapples onto that tiny thread of hope.

The following visits are one that slightly perplex Sesostris as the days wheel on. Healing incense, for one. He catches on the strong fragrance of lavender and sandalwood, clouding thick in the air, though something else smells pungent and sourly burnt.

Light spears through the smoke-veiled room and a mild draft wafts by for a lingering moment. While open air and sunlight are abound outside, he questions the minimal setting of missing draperies and wall hangings. A few furnishings are disposed of upon the Princess's request. She never quite confronts him about it, resigning back to her silence. The rukh around her is wary in its flight and glow a curious gold and vermillion.

A grinding three days after, Sesostris attempts to start a conversation that ultimately fails, though he begins to notice that she bounds linen bandages on her hands. There is no wound on them, but she messily rolls those bandages around them, regardless.

_None of that_, lectures Sesostris when he can tell her inexperience at her lousy wrapping. He can't stand the manner the bandages dangle and tangle over her palms. He doesn't touch her. The message is clear after she withdraws an arm's breadth away from him whenever he closes near her wrist. He is patient and respectful, so he abides. Yet he still teaches her the proper way of bandaging a hand.

Sighing deeply, Sesostris gives her time.

—

Fire destroys.

Ame know this, intimately. How the kiss of an incandescent flame burns to the touch, tasting of bitter embers and dusky clogging fumes. How its embrace can make flesh weep from its bones, churning yellow fat and lean muscle and charring them into brittle ash remains—or simply, oblivion.

Ame struggles with the fear of it alight from her fingers, and so she wraps them around linen bandages to snuff them out, to shroud them tight away from the world.

Though fire in nature isn't meant to be kept within itself. In its own way, it's fervently alive and stretches out for something to burn. In her isolation, there are days of slow smoldering and seldom outbursts. The former starts from a twirl of smoke, and when the mild heat creeps in and scorches at the fibers, fire blooms in from the singed holes of her bandages, making them wilt at the crook of her wrists.

It always begins at the base of her palm. For cautious measures, Ame strips to her small clothes so it can't catch farther from her sleeves and attempts to dip them in cold water to cool down the heat and smother it out. She learns to resist.

Passive days go by, and the nightmare never truly ends, roiling underneath the silk-draped surface. Ame always, always remembers the acrid taste of smoke stifling down her throat, the roar of a great fire crawling from her hair, the flaming retribution eating away at her singed flesh. _Pain_, she words it. She remembers pain. Even if it's not there.

Miraculously, when the rain comes gently, sweet and melancholic like an old song, Ame soaks her hands with ice-cold mercy and stays at the middle for hours, where the pure water pours the hardest and the gale whirls about her the loudest. She listens and listens.

_Ina . . . Ina, why am I like this?_

But there is no answer in this rain, her prayers still unheard.

—

It doesn't take long for the servants to find her, shivering and drenched to the bone, coaxing her back inside her bedchambers bathed and wrapped in quilted blankets next to a hearth. The Princess never speaks a word about it.

They whisper among themselves, sibilant and shrill. "Oh, poor princess, she must've gone mad again to storm out there in that outpour."

—

Fire spreads.

_Like no other_, argues Ame. Water seeps, wind permeates, lightning crackles, and earth pushes back, though fire _spreads_, and when it spreads, it thrives and breathes and blazes bright in the midst of destruction.

On some days, the rare outbursts are a flare-up of wild flames. Fire is rebellious when pent-up and outreaching, and it takes the opportunity to growl on the occasion when her emotions have gone askew, igniting at her palms like twin torches; white-hot and ardent and fulgent, as if her hands are made of sun specks and they flourish in her vulnerability. Fire _cackles_, too, in a mocking jeer. It challenges.

Time and time again, it becomes a battle of wills. A test in fortitude. Endurance. What gives this fire power over her? What gives it its right to punish her? Ame surmises of many an abstract idea. She curls her fingers in her locked palms, knuckles bulging, thinking of doused flames and the dying breath of smoke and the mindless brilliance of absolute _nothingness_.

Ame ruminates on the concept of emotion. Simmering, brewing, exciting emotions. Fire is passion, if nothing else. If impassioned, does it rise higher, brighter, blistering hot from the pads of her fingers? She mulls over conviction, too. Defiance. Resolution. She's still trying to figure it all out.

Ame fears fire when it once, twice, a hundred times, whatever, is the death of her. But—

_This won't burn me. _

These are her flames, whether she likes it or not.

This time, Ame learns to fight.

So it spirals to this, in itself almost takes shape into a private ritual; when Ame wakes from the gold-smoky entrails of crimson dawn and continues on with her life tentatively, progressively, shrouding a terrible secret that shouldn't be hidden and risking herself over her responsibilities because she still wants to move around, to learn as much as she can, to simply _be_. When the evening comes, the skies remind her of a great furnace scorching the day into a gloaming dark. The darkness is hopeful, somehow. She yearns to dream.

Control is key, in the end.

Ame teaches herself control, and that is the first stepping stone for this fire inside of her. No one has caught her yet. There are scorch-marks on cloth and burn-rashes by the walls. Sometimes, trailing smoke, and soot-black grass and white-ash blots on hard bark, streaked and partly charred. Inanimate objects and plants are fine. It's just the living beings that aren't, those that can breathe and speak and emote and smile.

Ame can't tell anyone, yet. She fears the unkept spur of her feelings and its fatal repercussions afterwards when control slips through her fingers and then the fire swells up like a manic beast and swallows a person whole.

It's a daft decision. Reckless and irrational. Maybe, Ame isn't thinking this through well enough. But she's always known what fire can do, what fire can feel like lapping under her skin.

Because the truth is, she can't live with herself if she ever burned someone.

—

Fear eats at her at the back of her mind and it flourishes at the insecure lack of control. That is true.

But when Ame is deft for one rare opportunity, melding the broken piece back to her short sword. The steel is rough and imperfect, but it glows like a melting star and its warmth consoles her in the darkness of her room.

For a fleeting interval, she lets the golden flames dance at her fingertips before she tucks it in her palm and its rose-gold embers imbeds under her nails. Ame smiles a little. Or frowns. She doesn't care.

Fire isn't supposed to be beautiful.

—

However, Sesostris is the first to know. Not in the manner she can forgive herself.

Once he happens by chance to find her hands aglow with fire and madness, he impetuously takes it upon himself to clamp his hands around her palms in an attempt to smother them out with his strange magic. Though the flames are too wild and raging and hot to be tamped down, and he gets burned by the sheer vindictive power of it. He doesn't let go. Jaw clenched, breath held, wounded and seared and bleeding by the seams of his tough skin; he holds onto her tighter.

Frantic, Ame closes her eyes and tries, tries, _tries_.

Until the fire fizzles out of her and its last breath is snuffed out by her own will. Her room smells of burnt flesh. It makes her nauseous, though Ame attempts to stay composed, despite her trembling fingers and the tears leaking from her eyes. She grabs for a damp piece of cloth in her room and carefully wraps it around his hands. Gentle hands, precise hands that heal.

Sniffing, Ame lowers her head. "Seso, I-I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry."

"Princess, I'll be fine, but you," Seso mutters with a quiet uncertainty, letting the events of the accident register and whisper out of him in a breathless revelation: ". . . you're a magician."

* * *

**A/N:** Will end with a cliffhanger. This is part one, folks! I'll edit this later.

This took so so _so_ long. I'm sorry for not keeping up with the promise of a long-ass chapter. I hope this would suffice for now, and nope, we're still going to slog through her whole past before winding up in the present. A lot of things still happened and some familiar faces might show up in the next chapter.

Since we're throwing canon out of the window, I'm physically aging her up by two years, peeps. The only thing that I will clarify on is that whenever she dreams of Anise, she's reliving Alibaba's past through his memories. There's also the thing that she's aging up _subconsciously_ in those dreams. Sometimes, for example, she dreams about Ali's life, living in it for whatever years, but eventually waking up in her body within a minimum of two to three days. That's why she's so disoriented. There's also the troubling issue that she can't recall everything in her dreams, like how our dreams work when we wake up.

Why she's going through this, you're free to speculate. It won't be fun if I spoil it. Besides, I will still be touching on her other dreams too.

I don't mind questions, so shoot right away. Actually, it makes me glad that a lot of you are curious. I didn't really expect the good reception in this story, so yes, it's very moving and I'd like to thank you all for that! I hope the non-canon stuff doesn't throw you all off.

Current ages should be: Ame [9], Sahbmad [11], Ahbmad [14]


End file.
